Sand and Ash by D. Moonfire

July 1, 2016

When the heart must choose between love and lust…

Ten years later, still an outsider and pacifist, Rutejìmo struggles with his role in a clan that far from welcomes him. Armed with the necklace from the woman who saved him many years ago, Rutejìmo harbors a childish desire for her. His clan less than tolerates his inexplicable yearning for her. And when he is given the chance, he mistakes his lust for unconditional and undying love for the one woman who doesn’t want him, creating a dangerous unrest between him and his clan.

After being ostracized from his clan, Rutejìmo searches for sanctuary, encountering Mapábyo, a woman he’s dismissed for most of his life. Running for their lives and breaking the rules, together they learn the true meaning of life, loyalty, and devotion. Rutejìmo realizes his mistake in loving the wrong person. Can he find a way to finally prove himself to the one woman who’s never doubted him?

Introduction

Sand and Ash is a sequel to D. Moonfire’s first novel with us, Sand and Blood. It continues the story of Rutejìmo as he continues to grow as a person while struggling to find his place in the world.

Sand and Ash is a novel just under 80k words set in D. Moonfire’s rich fantasy world. It is written in limited third person with a single male protagonist.

Some themes that appear in this book: bullying, death of named characters, death of unborn children, depression, graphical violence, personal tragedy, physical abuse, suicide, and verbal abuse. There is sex but no explicit scenes. There is no rape.

Samples

Shimusogo Rutejìmo ran alone across the desert, chasing after a bird, a dépa, he could never catch and only he could see. No matter where he ran, his feet struck solid ground. As his bare foot lifted from the ground, the rock crumbled back into shifting sands before being sucked into the plume of dust and rock that billowed out behind him. Despite running faster than most horses, his heartbeat was a steady rhythm that matched the impacts of his bare feet against the sun-burned ground. On a good day, he could cover thirty miles in less than an hour for as long as the sun hung in the sky.

The small bird was Shimusògo, his clan spirit. Only a foot tall, it always raced a heartbeat in front of him no matter how fast he sprinted. If he slowed, it would disappear and the heat and exhaustion would bear down on him. But when he chased Shimusògo, Rutejìmo felt the euphoria of magic pulsing through his veins and beating underneath his feet.

For the first time in months, he ran for the sake of running instead of racing from one end of the Mifuno Desert to the other while delivering documents and decrees. For a few days, he didn’t have to worry about recording legal contracts in Wamifuko City or the constant back and forth between Kidorisi Valley and Mafimara Ridge during tense negotiations for trade rights.

The last job, the one involving the Kidorīsi and Mafimára clans, still haunted his thoughts. More than a few times he had to circle around an ambush or sneak into the valleys to avoid being attacked by those opposed to the treaty. The wound on his leg still itched from his brush with a sniper’s arrow.

Rutejìmo tore his thoughts away from the previous job. The two clans signed their treaty, and Rutejìmo personally delivered it to the archives in Wamifuko City. It was the end of three months of hard running, and he was ready to spend a few days doing nothing but relaxing.

The desert air beat against his bare chest and tickled the dark hairs that dusted his chest. It tugged at his red trousers with sharp snaps of fluttering fabric. Motes of bright energy slipped out from Shimusògo’s wings and joined in with the wind to buffet his skin. The energy streamed around his body before joining in with the vortex of air created by his passage.

Appeal

The first and foremost is that we published Sand and Blood. If all goes well, we are going to do the third and final one in the beginning of 2017.

The other is that this is an atypical story. The protagonist, Rutejìmo is a pacifist in a violent fantasy world, that is something you don’t really see in fantasy novels. He makes a lot of mistakes and struggles with inner demons, some of them set him in a situation where his life is at risk but the resolution is less world-shattering and more personal growth.

Availability

Unlike most novels published by Broken Typewriter Press, Sand and Ash is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. This means that the ebooks are freely available on his website. If a reader likes it, they can either purchase a print version or a patron subscription.

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